Now I come to tea. People who have got no idea of the tea industry cannot conceive what great sacrifice Assam has made in the past, which sacrifice is continuing even now. The tea industry in Assam is more than a hundred years old and in order to attract foreign capital and to clear the wild-animal infested malarious jungles, the then Assam Government had to offer very easy terms of land settlement. The earlier grants were all fee-simple, which meant that they paid no land revenue to the Government of Assam. Next there are 99 years’ leases, for which Government levied the ludicrously low land revenue of about 41/2 annas per acre, whereas the ordinary cultivator has to pay about Rs. 4 per acre. So, in order to establish the tea industry on a very stable and firm footing in Assam, the Assam Government scarified an incalculable amount of money in the shape of land revenue. And now when the Central Government has stepped in and has started levying an excise duty of 3 annas per pound on teas that are sold for internal consumption in India and an export duty of 4 annas per pound on teas that are exported out of India, Assam is denied even an anna of the sum which goes to the Central Government. On an average Assam produces 350 million pounds of tea per annum. Three-fourths of this, under the Indian Tea Control Act, is sold to outside, which brings in a four anna per pound duty to the Central coffers. The rest one-fourth is sold in the internal market and that brings in three annas per pound. Now out of this 350 million pounds which is very nearly the requirements of Great Britain per annum, about 300 million pounds go from Assam alone. This is earning for the Central Government their much-needed sterling capital. Now on an average each tea garden has a labour force of one thousand to two thousand men. The communist agents are at work to seduce them from their legitimate duties and to force them to go up in revolt. Supposing the Assam Government think that as they are getting nothing they would give up the idea of preventing communists from tampering with the labour forces, where will the tea industry be and where will be the sterling capital of the Central Government? But even then the man-made laws have denied Assam anything out of these tea export and excise duties. Then again the sacrifice which Assam is making for this tea industry can be gauged from this fact alone that the largest amount of revenue that Assam gets is from land revenue; it is very nearly 11/2 crores but the share of the tea gardens in this land revenue is only 17 lakhs. If concession rates had not been given in those early years perhaps the tea garden people would have to pay at least 75 lakhs as land revenue. But there is yet another doleful and gruesome aspect about the tea industry. The Central Government has a most unjust, iniquitous and pernicious scheme of allocating the shares of different provinces from the income-tax pool. By what calculation, Sir Otto Niemeyer placed Assam’s share of this pool at 2 pet cent. only. I fail togather, while Bengal and Bombay was given 20 per cent. and Madras and U.P. 15 per cent. and so on. Out of roughly one thousand tea estates in Assam as many as 750 have got their managing agencies outside Assam –some 600 of them in Calcutta and 150 in London, as these are all sterling companies, and income-tax on Assam produced tea is paid either in Calcutta or in London. The amount which is paid in Calcutta goes to the credit of Bengal and that is why they are getting 20 per cent. of the total divisible pool. If that point had been given due consideration the division of that pool should have been on the basis of, first, source of revenue and secondly, necessity of the area which grows that tea. I am again constrained to quote the Bengali proverb of “pouring oil on the oily head” or the Biblical saying, “To him that hath more shall be given.” While poor Assam and Orissa have been crying hoarse over getting some substantial help, even when a large percentage in the pool was released after the division of India, Madras which has 50 crores of revenue got 10 per cent. or an increase of 3 per cent. more and Bombay got 22 per cent. but poor Orissa and Assam got an increase of I per cent. only. Even when there was a chance justice would not be meted out to these poor provinces. The same trouble is with Bihar. Bihar would have got a much higher percentage than 10 per cent. if the income derived from the Tata Iron Works at Jamshedpur were credited to the province of Bihar. But their headquarters being in Bombay the benefit of the huge income-tax that is paid by Tata Iron Works goes to Bombay and not to Bihar.
